The PCs in my campaign will arrive in Greysmere at the end of the next session. One PC is a dwarf who's been avoiding coming home for about six months, as his mother has arranged his marriage to the daughter of Fionor the Rude (the head of Greysmere). The rest of the party is the usual Domain of Greyhawk riffraff (a Rhennee fighter, a old man jack-of-all-trades, a shy witch, and a half-faerie from Celene who pretends to be full elf).
I'm planning on a downtime session, role-playing heavy, where the party interacts with the local dwarves. This will necessarily involve a dinner feast with Fionor the Rude (because how can you visit Greysmere and not meet Fionor the Rude?).
I'm looking for—
• interesting stuff that other DMs have done with Greysmere over the years
• dwarven cultural stuff I should emphasize or mention, including stuff specific to Greysmere (for instance, these dwarves worship Ulaa instead of the dwarven pantheon: how does that change things?)
• fun scenes or role-playing encounters
• insults, shenanigans, and outrages I can use for the dinner w/ Fionor the Rude
Any suggestions and/or assistance is much welcome!
This sounds like a fun role playing scenario! If you have access to the old Dragon Magazines, check out issue number 245 for an article on dwarf etiquette by Christopher Perkins. There is a lot of role play material in it that will assist you - to include a dwarf insult generator!
I haven't done much with Greysmere specifically, but the Dragon 245 issue has several useful articles that might be helpful. The Complete Book of Dwarves, a 2e supplement ... if you can find it ... might also be helpful. There are some bits and pieces you might like.
There are some articles here on the internet that are also quite good. Greyhawkery has one, along with several very good blogs and some home brew stuff.
Thank you both for all of the suggestions. I've been a fan of the Complete Book of Dwarves (the best of the Complete series) and of the Dwarven etiquette article for some time.
Have Fionor serve a dinner of utterly disgusting “delicacies” a la Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom. If the players know Fionor is as surly as his reputation makes him, would be fun to watch them try to role play their way out of offending him.
Couple other thoughts about Greysmere, CoG says that it is a backwater and has “never outgrown its present location.” Yes it also says that the dwarves have tunneled far underground to a source of “prime limestone” that takes “great effort” to bring back for “building and sculpting.” If Greysmere isn’t growing, then what are the dwarves building? And limestone is not exactly a rare commodity close to the surface, so what makes this limestone worth the effort? Points I always wanted to develop but my campaign has never revolved around this area.
Where is the reference to the Greysmere dwarves worshipping Ulaa? That’s interesting and I haven’t heard that before.
Where is the reference to the Greysmere dwarves worshipping Ulaa? That’s interesting and I haven’t heard that before.
It's from the Greyhawk Player's Guide, page 62. It's one of the concepts Roger E. Moore used to talk about on the AOL message boards, that the Ulaa-worshiping dwarves and Dwarven Pantheon-worshiping dwarves represented separate religious traditions. In some ways, I guess they have to, since Ulaa and Dumathoin have largely identical portfolios and even holy symbols you'd probably acknowledge one or the other, but not both. And Ulaa is married to Bleredd, who has something of Moradin's dominion over smiths.
Ulaa-worshiping dwarves would probably share rites with other Ulaa-worshiping humans and demihumans, so you'd have more cross-racial cooperation and things like gnomish, halfling, or human clerics serving beside them and maybe the dwarven high priest in Greysmere acknowledging a high priest of another race somewhere else as their superior. Whereas dwarves who concentrate on the dwarven pantheon (what Forgotten Realms sources called the Mordinsamman) would be more insular, and traditional, in some cases maybe even xenophobic.
Ulaa isn't a young deity, but she's of unknown origin and revered by many races and peoples. Dungeon #117 (page 35) claims her clerics use timelost rituals handed down from a race extinct for more than 10,000 years. This might be the Crafters (the extraplanar race who built Exag and disappeared 12,000 years ago, see Dungeon #145, page 49), or perhaps an ancient race of giants.
I like to use Ulaa as a replacement for Othea, the mountain goddess who bore the ancestors of the giant races to the giant god Annam in the Forgotten Realms setting (except Ulaa doesn't die). I think it makes her more interesting.
Why some dwarves accepted Ulaa as their primary deity is unknown. Perhaps they blended more with other races in the aftermath of the war with the duergar or the Twin Cataclysms and Great Migrations, when all was chaos, some of the old dwarven kingdoms had been destroyed, and strange times made for strange bedfellows. Perhaps the dwarves always knew of Ulaa, and it's Moradin and his children who are the newer faith. It's likely that different groups of dwarves have different views on exactly who strayed from whom.
I wouldn't necessarily assume the Ulaans and Mordinsammians are calling each other heretics or that there's no syncretism between the two faiths. There's plenty of room for Ulaa-worshiping dwarves to still acknowledge Clangeddin as the god of war, Dugmaren Brightmantle as the god of scholarship and invention, and even Dumathoin as the god of underground exploration and the dead. Some may believe Bleredd and Moradin are one and the same.
Great find on that Ulaa reference, Rasgon. I guarantee that was placed there by Erik Mona, and I think you're right to suspect he was hinting at her origins with the creators of Exag. I can't believe I never noticed that before (I ran a 7 year campaign based on that Istivin article). There is so much room to develop the faith of Ulaa, and I always was intrigued in Gygax's late addition of her and Xan Yae to the other gods that had appeared in Dragon. Xan Yae seems more understandable, as Gygax had at least an outline for Shadowlands (where she marries the Cat Lord) in the works, but Ulaa felt like a goddess we didn't know we needed, and I wondered if he had some particular purpose for introducing her.
Califor, I love the disgusting dinner idea, but what would be most wonderful would be to find food that dwarves love that Fionor knows all other races find disgusting. Does anyone have any ideas on treacherous dwarven cuisine?
I'm also trying to imagine if Fionor the Rude were a modern day celebrity, who would he be? He needs a strong portrayal at the table and I'm not yet sure who to model him on.
I'm also trying to imagine if Fionor the Rude were a modern day celebrity, who would he be? He needs a strong portrayal at the table and I'm not yet sure who to model him on.
It might be difficult to pull off, but Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), from Matrix Reloaded, would be a great role-play opportunity, if you could have Fionor the Rude explain how beautiful it sounds to curse in elven...
Otherwise, I like Rasgon's suggestion of Gilbert Gottfried. In a similar vein, Sam Kinnison would work well.
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